Horizontal Expansions

Robotic surgeries are becoming a popular and integral part of hospital operations, as they offer important advantages, such as minimal invasiveness and significantly faster recovery times for the patients. Robotic prostatectomies, for instance, can potentially reduce the recovery time from months to days.

The potential sensitivity of robotic arms is orders of magnitude more precise than human arms. However, by operating such machinery, we are not simply accessorizing but also integrating our bodies and minds into advanced machino-extensions. We are expanding our bodies in the horizontal manner, i.e. while we are not necessarily becoming taller (or are we?), we are becoming wider- wider in the array of abilities we possess, wider in our sense of self, wider in our understanding of the world.

Al though it seems that we may be changing and evolving into a machino-human hybrid (as mentioned before), perhaps our change is not so drastic after all (if there is any change at all). In many ways, what we expect our robotic enhancements to perform is simply an extension of who we already are; the robots have always been a part of us, and a significant difference between today and yesterday is simply that we have the means to realize this aspect of our personality.

Humans have always strived to achieve more and become more. And, with robo-technology today, we are becoming more and gaining more abilities, but at the same time, if all of these things we are becoming are just things that were already a part of us but simply unrealizable physically before because of technology and knowledge, then are we merely becoming only ourselves in the end? And by becoming more and more different in this manner, are we also staying more and more the same than ever before?